


Love Leads To Isolation

by sharpiesgal (TigerLily)



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Character Death Fix, Established Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-11
Updated: 2013-07-11
Packaged: 2017-12-19 03:10:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/878733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TigerLily/pseuds/sharpiesgal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sick of watching her friends hurt, Pepper brings Phil and Tony together to work things out and repair their broken relationship after the Battle of Manhattan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Love Leads To Isolation

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kaige68](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaige68/gifts).



> I would like to thank my cheerleading squad over at 1_million_words for their support and encouragement while I worked on this beastie. I also wanted to thank my partner-in-crime, lasairfhiona for the encouragement and the beta. Thanks must also go to haldoor for the title suggestions. Love y’all bunches.
> 
> Title come from the Phil Collins song _Separate Lives_.
> 
> Written for Slashorific 2013

Tony sat on the floor slumped against the couch with a tumbler precariously balanced on his knee. He stared out the floor to ceiling windows wondering why he still felt sober after consuming a whole bottle of scotch.

 

Sunlight poured in through the windows warming the room as the sun rose over the Manhattan skyline in an array of pinks, reds and oranges. Tony wasn’t in the frame of mind to appreciate the light show since it meant he had spent another sleepless night avoiding his inner demons.

 

He was going to crash soon and while the idea didn’t appeal this time he almost welcomed his body’s desire for rest because a dreamless sleep was better than wandering around the Tower in an exhausted haze.

 

The Chitauri invasion fueled by Loki’s insatiable need to destroy anything Thor held dear had changed everything and not for the better. Tony was still trying to come to terms with the fallout and all things he had seen when he flew that nuke through the portal not expecting to come out of the experience alive.

 

“Sir, Miss Potts is on her way up,” Jarvis broke into Tony’s reverie.

 

“Whatever, J,” Tony replied before finishing his drink. He sat the empty tumbler on the coffee table. He leaned his head back and closed his eyes in a poor attempt to center himself like Bruce had shown him the day after the battle. 

 

He really wasn’t in the mood to deal with people, especially Pepper.

 

“Agent Coulson is with her.”

 

Tony’s eyes opened as his head snapped up at that information and he muttered, “Dirty pool, Pep.” He could tell Pepper no and sometimes she would humor him, but Phil Coulson was a different story. His ex-lover never put up with his antisocial bullshit, and today was probably another attempt to drag him back into the land of the living.

 

“Shall I tell them to come back later?” Jarvis inquired.

 

“No,” Tony sighed. He pushed off the floor using the couch to steady himself before wandering into his bedroom to freshen up. “It won’t stop them. They would go around you and I’d rather not have that happen again.”

 

“Indeed, sir,” Jarvis replied with a put upon air that had Tony chuckling as he stripped and stepped into the shower,

*&*

“Tony,” Pepper said with a note of fond exasperation in her voice as he left the steam-filled bathroom with only a towel wrapped around his waist.

 

Tony jumped startled by her voice. “Jesus, Pep,” he snapped. “Can’t a guy have some privacy?”

 

“It’s not like the world hasn’t seen it all before,” Pepper sharply retorted. She watched with disinterest as he got dressed in sweat pants and a black tank top. “And, you’ve been hiding up here for the better part of a week now.”

 

“Been that long has it?”

 

“You know it has been.”

 

“What do you want, Pepper?” Tony asked with his arms across his chest hiding the light of the arc reactor that leaked through his shirt. He was determined to get to the point of her and Phil’s impromptu visit.

 

“I want you to man up, go out there and have a conversation with Phil,” Pepper stated matter-of-factly as she rose from the bed. She noted his defensive posture, but pushed on in spite of it. “He deserves some answers.”

 

“He doesn’t deserve shit,” Tony muttered. “He fucking lied to me.”

 

“You aren’t a saint when it comes to that, Tony,” Pepper firmly reminded him.

 

“And, if I don’t go out there?”

 

“I have put up with your childish behavior for years, but today that stops. Go out there and talk to Phil or go find yourself a new CEO.”

 

“Emotional blackmail doesn’t suit you,” Tony quietly remarked surprised that he had managed to piss his best friend off to such an extent.

 

“You’ve been a good teacher,” Pepper threw in his face.

 

“Alright,” Tony agreed with a tired sigh knowing Pepper was right. He gathered the final bits of his courage and left to face the one person who could break his already damaged heart to pieces.

*&*

Phil walked around the living room taking in the empty tumbler on the coffee table and the equally empty scotch bottle on the bar wondering who he would be dealing with once Pepper dug Tony out of his bedroom.

 

Public Tony was a pain in his ass with his superior attitude and snarky comments, but Private Tony broke his heart as he battled demons that would have ripped a lesser man to shreds.

 

Phil turned at the sound of someone clearing their throat and felt his heart lodge in his throat as his eyes met Tony’s dark brown ones. He could get lost in them for days, but he forced himself to look away and put on a calm façade.

 

“Pepper says we need to talk, but I’m not certain there is anything left to say,” Tony said bitterly hiding the twinge of guilt he felt for the remains of the black eye Phil was still sporting.

 

“I’m not going to apologize again,” Phil simply stated shifting his gaze to a point over Tony’s left shoulder and watched Pepper quietly leave the penthouse. “Either you forgive me and we move on together or you don’t and we move on separately.”

 

“Didn’t figure you for the ultimatum type, Phil.”

 

“I didn’t figure I was the type who would fall in love with a narcissistic playboy with a penchant for self-destruction either.”

 

Tony gave a sniff of derision. “Oh, how you wound me, Phil,” he quipped as he walked toward the kitchen.

 

“Can you be serious for just one moment?” Phil asked in quiet annoyance. He followed Tony into the kitchen and watched him pour himself a cup of coffee before going about making a proper pot of tea.

 

“I’d rather not, but Pepper insisted, so I’ll give you five minutes of serious after that it’s a crap shoot.”

 

“Ten?” Phil asked wondering how his love life had devolved to bargaining for time to be heard.

 

“Really?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Fine. Ten it is,” Tony capitulated wanting to get this conversation over with quickly. Phil in casual dress was more of a distraction than normal and he needed to stay focused or he would do something foolish. “Do you take your tea the same way?”

 

Phil nodded as he settled onto a stool at the breakfast bar.

 

Tony set a cup of tea in front of Phil before returning to lean against the counter nearest the sink taking an occasional sip from the cup he cradled against his chest. “Go ahead and have your say, but if I don’t like what I hear, I’ll ask you to leave.”

 

“Okay,” Phil agreed. He would take what he could get since Tony had been ignoring his attempts to explain his reasoning for going along with Fury’s plan in the first place. “I guess I should start at the beginning.”

 

“Always a good place or so I’ve been told.”

 

Phil tried hard not to grind his teeth and snap back at Tony. He knew the billionaire was only trying to get a rise out of him. It was what Tony did when he felt insecure, and having a lover return from the dead could certainly make one feel insecure.

 

“I made a mistake agreeing to play dead, but at the time I had been given a very good reason to do so,” he began to explain. “The Avengers Initiative was falling apart before it even came together, so a common cause was needed to repair the damage Loki’s manipulations had caused.”

 

“A push so to speak,” Tony said biting back on a long string of sarcastic comments.

 

“It worked,” Phil firmly replied. “Everyone came together to defeat Loki and help repair the damage caused by his army. I was ready to rejoin the living when Nick got word about the Winter Soldier.”

 

“So he needed somebody completely off the grid to bring Barnes in?”

 

“I doubt he would have come in for Natasha alone and Rogers wasn’t even an option,” Phil explained not surprised to learn that Tony knew who the Winter Soldier really was.

 

“So it was the invaluable Phil Coulson to the rescue again,” Tony quipped unable to hold back the sarcasm any longer.

 

Phil rolled his eyes and gave a slight shake of his head. “That’s one description I haven’t been saddled with.”

 

Tony smirked, but refrained from taking the bait and changing the tone of the conversation to a sexual one. “We can compare notes later,” he retorted. “Now, I want the rest of the story.”

 

Phil took a sip of his tea mildly surprised that Tony was actually behaving himself and briefly wondered what Pepper had said to him to get this level of cooperation out of the billionaire.

 

“Are you going to keep me hanging here, Phil, or what?” Tony prompted after a few minutes of silence had filled the room.

 

“You’re curiosity is insatiable,” Phil retorted with a grin.

 

“No argument there,” Tony quipped returning Phil’s grin. “Are you going to tell me or do I sic Jarvis on the SHIELD mainframe again?”

 

“As much as I enjoy watching you squirm and Nick blow a gasket, I’ll forego my entertainment and tell you.”

 

“You are an evil, evil man, Phil,” Tony chuckled. He really had missed Phil’s dry wit.

 

“Then it’s a good thing I have you to keep me on the straight and narrow.”

 

“I don’t know about that,” Tony hedged as he found himself settling onto a stool across from Phil his anger and hurt diminished, but not forgotten. “I mean you know what they say about the dark side.”

 

“The cookies aren’t that great,” Phil immediately retorted which set both him and Tony to softly laughing.

 

Tony sobered up first. “So Barnes?”

 

Phil went on to tell Tony of his adventures in returning one James “Bucky” Barnes to the fold know as SHIELD.

*&*

Later on, Pepper returned to check on them and was relieved to find them sitting on the couch watching and discussing the technical merits of _The Bourne Legacy_ and wondering if Clint had a twin.

 

Fin


End file.
